With NYC Summer Heat Comes American Cockroaches

The American cockroach or waterbug is a large cockroach of about 2 1/2 to 3 inches that spends most of its life in moist and damp environments. In New York City these cockroaches inhabit the sewer system by the billions. They are a wonderful food source for rats but they are a bane to any apartment dweller that has had to confront them scurrying about their kitchen or bathroom. Providing pest control services to multimillion dollar units the last thing you want to confront is an ongoing onslaught of American roaches entering a unit through a broken pipe vent or another area that is as of yet unknown. Typically controlling the basement of the building that you are servicing is enough to prevent American roaches from getting into people’s apartments. But during extreme temperature fluctuations there seems to be an exodus from their common home the sewer, and in large numbers can invade buildings. During heat waves, this is especially true in New York City. The temperatures increase to such a level that it drives out many of the organisms living within it due to the oppressive heat. Summer seems to be the worst time for American cockroach calls and typically the months of July and August are the worst. We had one incident where there were cockroaches in a high-end building in the living room of an apartment that was unexplained. It had been renovated for the new owner and was visually stunning. Imagine the horror they felt as they dealt with American cockroach after American cockroach all typically within the same area of their newly renovated masterpiece. The last thing that you want to deal with his American cockroaches in a million-dollar apartment that has gone through $1 million-plus renovation. Eventually, it was determined that the area that we were seeing the activity had a vent line that had not been sealed properly and was allowing American roaches out and they were living behind the wall in a nice moist environment. Contractors ended up opening up that wall and we proceeded to vacuum out approximately 3000-4000 large roaches. It was quite the scene. This is atypical and uncommon. But science has shown that the American cockroach tends to like to travel vertically through buildings. So in most cases if you start out with cockroaches in the lower floors they always seem to end up in the penthouse units. Not something that you want to add to your views.

So what are your options if you are being inundated with American roaches. The first thing to do is to take a look at the basement area. If there are a lot of American roaches present in the basement they will eventually move to the upper floors. Instituting a residual baiting program will help in most cases eradicate the issues prior to them gaining access to the remainder of the building. If you are seeing American roaches in an area of the unit that is atypical it may be best to bring in a scope to view the interior of the walls in that area to determine if there is some type of opening or construction characteristic that is allowing cockroaches to live and breed. Moisture meters are very helpful in this respect as well as FLIR guns to determine areas that may be having an interior issue. Sometimes half the job is detecting the source of the issue.

A3 Superior Pest Control are experts in American cockroach control. You can learn more about our services here.
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